The present invention relates generally to power consumption management and, more particularly, to the discovery and detection of the relationship between a power consuming device and power distribution outlets.
An intelligent PDU (Power Distribution Unit) has emerged in recent years as an apparatus which has a LAN interface for providing management information to and facilitating control by a management system so that the management system can remotely power ON/OFF each outlet of the PDU. In order to achieve Green IT (Green Information Technology for, e.g., reducing power consumption), monitoring and metering power consumption of each power consuming device will be important and such intelligent PDU will be very useful to perform those functions. What is more, monitoring the usage of each outlet is important for detecting and preventing too much power consumption for any given PDU or rack, and is necessary for optimizing power capacity planning in a server room, a data center, or the like.
The management system of a PDU has management information such as the relationship between an outlet and a device to which the outlet supplies power. Currently, such relationship information is set manually by an operator/administrator or it can be set by importing data with a CSV (Comma Separated Values) file. However, it will be very burdensome work for an operator/administrator to set the mapping (relationship) information for each pair of an outlet and a device, especially in cases where the number of devices is very large; furthermore, to make a CSV file would also be burdensome. In addition, a device may be connected to an outlet which is different from the outlet defined in the set mapping (relationship) information. If that occurs, there is no way to detect the error under the current approaches. Moreover, human error may result in the connection of a device to an unused outlet with no authorization, which may cause problems such as excessive power consumption for the PDU or power supply. Such errors should be detected to avoid problems, but it is difficult to do so under the current approaches.